Nintendo Co. said that it would launch a new version of its blockbuster "Wii Sports" software in Japan in June to shore up flagging Wii console sales in its home market but that it planned no hardware price cuts at the moment.

Nintendo's earlier "Wii Sports" game helped drive its console sales. The game allows users to play baseball, tennis and other sports using a motion-sensing controller.

Wii Sports Resort, which will hit overseas markets in July, lets users throw a frisbee to a virtual dog or duel one another with swords with the controller, which looks like a TV remote and enables gamers to direct on-screen play by swinging it like a racket or baseball bat.

"The software is one of the key games Nintendo will launch this business year," Rakuten Securities analyst Yasuo Imanaka said.

"I think it will definitely be software that can propel sales of hardware," he said.

Nintendo's Wii game console far outsells Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 globally.

But in Japan, sales of the PS3 outstripped those of the Wii in March for the first time in 16 months thanks to new PS3 titles from Sega Sammy and Capcom, game magazine publisher Enterbrain said this week.

"Wii (demand) is not vigorous at the moment in Japan," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told reporters at a lunch meeting. "In fact, it is in the most unhealthy situation since its launch in Japan."

Mr Iwata said, however, he had no plan to cut hardware prices to stir up demand.

"If our products are not much different from competitors', price cuts would generate significant fresh demand. But video games are just not that kind of product," he said.

Nintendo first showed its Wii Sports Resort game to the media last July, along with Wii Music, which lets players simulate more than 60 different instruments. It said back then that it would launch the sports game in spring.